He strikes in broad daylight during busy times at a Gastonia gas station, pulling a car up to a pump that’s been tampered with and stealing hundreds of gallons of premium gasoline. The suspect has repeated the crime for about six weeks and remains at large.

Sometimes he’s brazen enough to line up cars behind his and sell gas right at the pump for cash. Then he vanishes before the cashier knows what happened.

Police are looking for three men who are considered suspects in the case. Mahmood describes the main suspect as a young black man who has only recently stopped stealing from the store. But the financial damage is done. Police say the store has been robbed of an estimated 3,700 gallons of gas valued at more than $12,000.

Mahmood says the thief accesses a switch inside the pump and breaks it, making gas pump freely without a computer inside the store noticing. He said he decided to report the crime to police earlier this week after surveillance camera footage was reviewed. A company that services gas pumps at the station recently told Mahmood about the vandalism.

“Sometimes if there is a customer standing there (near the pump) we have seen that he is talking to them,” Mahmood said, adding that he’s “very surprised” that some people bought gas directly from the thief in the parking lot and in turn, helped him steal from the store. “I thought it was their moral duty to say there is a guy that is selling cheap gas outside.”

In a specific incident on Dec. 18, one of the suspects paid several dollars for gas at the store and then filled up two vehicles that were caught on surveillance camera footage – a Ford Taurus and a Dodge Durango, according to the Gastonia Police Department.

Anyone with information on the suspects is asked to call Detective Nancy Capistran at 704-866-6884 or Crime Stoppers of Gaston County at 704-861-8000.